Things I'm savouring #1

God is giving me some wonderful new things to think about at the moment. I'm savouring them. They're so good that I want to share them... but in the spirit of savouring truth, rather than devouring-without-tasting it, I'm going to blog them one at a time.

So here's the first*:

We know that Christians are called not just to speak about Christ, but to live as He did (and does). This means active, practical service of others. Sometimes it gets confusing though to think about what my motives are in wanting to serve:

... do I have double motives (one to serve, the other to introduce them to Jesus? This is confusing to me),
... or do we serve just for service's sake (but what then about the fact that eternal needs are not being met, just temporal ones?),
... or do we serve to build relationship so that we can then share about Jesus (in which case, what if they aren't interested later. Do we remain friends and keep serving? Or start with someone new? The latter seems heartless.)

Our pastor said something really helpful to me on this. On the question of "why do Christians do good things?", the answer is this: we do so because Jesus calls us to love and serve people, just as He loves and wants to serve them... (and here's the punchline!!!) ... and so we serve with the ULTIMATE motive of seeing people come to know Jesus, but not with the ULTERIOR motive of doing so. This was a tremendously clear, practical and freeing thing for me to hear. I'm savouring it.

_______________________________
* For those readers who do not share my faith, I hope that this will not freak you out too much as it really is a sneak peak answer to that oft-asked question "What in the world are those Christians thinking?"